Picture a Day - Day 339

I am a mac girl.

In fact, I have been my entire computing life because all we ever had at home were macs.

While other people were learning about the blue screen of death and just getting into all those big computer games I was cutting my technological teeth on Clarisworks and Nanosaur (the game where dinosaurs shoot rockets).

Much like being left handed and having to learn to adjust to the right hand favored society I quickly became computorially ambidextrous. I flew on a mac but could also perform fairly standard things on Windows. It also meant that the rare times I'd run into a mac in high school or college I could fix the problem much faster than any tech support.

Before the Apple Store or the iPod and iBook helped to bring Apple to the masses, you pretty much had to rely on your own wits to fix your computer. Tech help had almost no idea what the hell to do with it short of take your money and hide it in the back hoping it'd go away. Luckily it rarely ever broke down.

So while I'll never have anything else and generally just curse up a storm when I have to use Windows on a machine there is one thing that's always been a bit of a pipe dream for me, and it's just a piece of plastic on an axle.My dream was finally realized when after about 5 years of abuse and at least 6 moves my old mouse was starting to die.

I started what I thought would be a long search to find a compatible mouse.

Once again growing up with Macs in an all Windows landscape that was the late 90's I was trained that almost nothing was mac compatible and you had to be extra super careful and do tons of research before purchasing anything for fear it'd never work.

Though that's all changed a lot now with Intel going in iMacs and those cool white machines inhabiting just about every coffee shop. Not to mention USB. I adore those three little letters.

So what would have been a much more expensive and much longer wait 10 years ago was a quick and simple here's $15, here's an optical mouse with a scroll wheel.

Oh how I love that little thing. You never realize just how great something is until it's gone, or it was never really an option.

And because I can't show off my mouse without also showing off my mouse pad:
I think you can about guess how old that is. It's fraying on the edge, Samwise looks like his skin is starting to flake off and Sauron's pretty much faded into the background but how else can I proclaim to the world that I am a nerd? And a hobbit loving one at that?

Okay so the entire post should probably do it as well but it's hard to get in mouse pad form.

What do you have on your mouse pad? We can call it show off your mouse pad day!

Did anyone else have a mac growing up when they were computational machine non grata?